Automated fuel-dispensing systems and semi-automated fuel-dispensing systems have been devised to permit unattended or semi-unattended purchases of fuel by authorized customers of such systems. Customers using systems of this type typically include municipalities, large trucking companies, and the like. When only a single customer uses a given facility, control of the fuel-dispensing facility is relatively simple. When the system, however, is required to serve many different customers or a single customer with a large number of drivers and vehicles, it generally is necessary to have an attendant on duty at a central location in the station for billing purposes. Typically, systems of this latter type are the commonly known "self-service" gasoline stations which have a central location manned by an attendant who monitors volume readers and the pump turn-on switch controls for the fuel pumps located at the station. The customers pump their own fuel and then go to the central location to pay for the fuel or otherwise take care of the billing.
Fully automatic self-service fuel-dispensing systems have been developed in which a credit card or specially prepared credit document is inserted into a card reader, with selected data from the card then being transmitted to a remote central computer for verification. If the document is verified as an authorized document, the system then permits the withdrawal of fuel under the control of the credit card. The value of the fuel withdrawn is monitored and, upon completion of the transaction, data representative of this quantity is transmitted by the local controller along with the credit card identification to a central computer for processing on the particular account number indicated by the credit card being used. While a system of this type permits the completely unattended operation of a fuel-dispensing service station for customers having credit cards usable in the system, it requires committed transmission links between the location of the fuel pumps and the central computer location. This results in a relatively expensive system and limits the flexibility which is available at any given fuel-dispensing site.
It is desirable to simplify automatic fuel-dispensing systems operated under control of a credit card or credit document by concentrating verification of the credit card and control of the fuel dispensers from a single local control console for a number of different dispensers, without the necessity of verification of each transaction or a portion of each transaction by a central computer located remotely from the fuel-dispensing site. Further, such an unattended fuel-dispensing site should be capable of producing a complete record of the transaction, including identification of the credit card used to initiate the transaction, as well as the quantity and type of fuel withdrawn, along with other optional data such as time, date, site location, and the like. Such data representative of a transaction then may be stored in a suitable store-and-forward memory or may be transmitted directly, as desired, from a teletypewriter terminal to a central processing computer for ultimate billing purposes for the completed transactions at the fueling site.